Rye humor

I'm wiped out tonight. Had a great weekend taking the kids camping for the first time, rafting down the Sandy River, and generally enjoying summertime.

Nevertheless, I baked. Well? No, not at all. I made a mess of most everything I touched, but they still tasted quite good.

(Perhaps that could be a a new motto for the site: "Artisan Baking: Because even your mistakes are tasty!")

I tried a bunch of recipes from Daniel Leader's soon-to-be-released book Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers. As I said, I screwed them all up, but that isn't the books fault, that was me thinking "Oh, I can make it down the river in time to not overproof the loaves." I was wrong. I also mixed up my whole wheat starter and my rye starter, so my final rye and whole wheat breads ended up tasting quite a bit like one another.

Picture time.

Simple French Bread Loaves

Polish Rye Bread

Inside the Rye (with Caraway)

I'll write up a real review in the next few days, but I definitely think the Daniel Leader book is a winner. Solid recipes, nice design and typography, very accessible. Definitely a good one, and going to give Peter Reinhart's new book a run for bakers interested in whole grain baking's money this fall.

I also baked an Orange Honey Prune bread from Beth Hensberger's The Bread Bible. Convenient since, as zainaba22 pointed out, the theme of this month's bread baking day is bread with fruit.

Very good stuff. I'll post the recipe in the next couple of days.